"Here they are at last!"

As she and her husband passed through the wicket and up the narrow path, Jane could hear Diana's animated voice issuing from within the cottage, accompanied by Carlo's excited barking and the sudden flutter of a window curtain as if someone had rushed from thence only a second before.

"It seems we are expected," she said, giving the arm she held an affectionate squeeze that did but a pallid justice to the joy that flooded through her at the idea of her favorite people in the world being so soon gathered all together here, in this small house in the middle of a great, lonely moor. Yes, here they were at last.

Jane had become so accustomed to having to put up with a great deal of coaxing to secure her husband's company for a mere outing to Millcote – for, though he had become reconciled to weekly attendance at the parish church, in the year since their marriage he had not been able to reconcile his pride to moving openly in society where he dreaded being the subject of gossip and pity – so that, when Edward had assented readily to her tentative suggestion of a journey to Yorkshire, she had been surprised and delighted.

"I know you must wish to see your cousins, my dear, and I daresay a trip away from Ferndean will be welcome and do you no end of good."

"Darling, you mustn't tease so! You know how fond I am of our home, leaky roof and all – but I confess I do long to see Diana and Mary. It is coming up on a year now since Diana's visit, and longer still since I saw Mary, and of course I should love to see dear Moor House again."

"Well, you had best write to them, then, and find out when we are welcome."

The reply from her cousins had arrived promptly and had enthusiastically bid them come as soon as they possibly could, suggesting a date that fell a mere week after the letter was received. Jane had but one reservation – the date Diana and Mary proposed was also the date of her and Edward's first anniversary.

"Perhaps," she had said after reading the letter to him, "you would prefer to postpone our visit? Perhaps you would rather we spend that day alone?"

"What would please you better? You must decide. Would your cousins' presence be unwelcome on that day?"

"For my part I shouldn't mind…" she began, intending to press him again for his own preference, but he interrupted,

"Then it is settled. We will spend our anniversary in Yorkshire, at the cottage you have spoken of to me so often. That will make you happy, will it not?" He looked and spoke with such eagerness that for a moment she wondered whether he had in fact formulated this plan himself and contrived it so that the idea seemed her own.

"Yes," she said, reaching for his hand. "Yes, it will."

"It will be the honeymoon we never took," he pronounced, smiling. "We shall travel together to this distant clime, and I shall depend upon you to show me all the great landmarks and attractions of the district – we must make a pilgrimage to every stone, every scraggly hedgerow you admired. I intend to fully immerse myself in this Northern retreat of yours, down to the last clump of heath."

And so it was that they had journeyed together along the same roads Jane had traveled alone a year earlier, and on the afternoon of the third day arrived at the Whitcross stop, from which they'd walked the last mile over the heath to Moor House.

"The air here is marvelous," he'd remarked, drawing it in with long, deep breaths. "So dry – one can feel the vastness of this place in the very gusts of wind."

He did not mention Ferndean, but she knew it was present in his mind as he filled his lungs again and again while the wind tugged at his blue-black hair and a glorious expression of freedom alighted on his face. This untamed country was utterly unlike Ferndean, where the air was dense, cloistered round by trees, comforting and protective in summer, but suffocating as a dark harbinger-fog in the lightless months.

"Yes, there is scarcely a tree in sight but for the shadows of them on the hills yonder. I suppose to the birds we must appear as mere specks." And then she felt a twinge as she recalled three tormented days when the very openness of the place had been a threat, when the faraway trees had been as the symbols of dreams unattainable. She wondered whether that was how he regarded Morton – the place she had fled to, the place she had forsaken him for, exposing herself to the elements with all the abandon of Lear rather than stay another moment by his side.

But his expression was untroubled, his brow smooth, his side pressed close and unresisting against hers, and when they came in sight of the cottage Jane's doubts vanished and she experienced only the sweet pleasure of having him with her in this wild place she had grown to love.

The door opened before they had reached it, and Diana hurried out, arms extended. At the sight of her Jane broke from her husband, half-laughing, half-crying her joyful greetings as she embraced and kissed her cousin whom she regarded as dearly as a sister.

When she had hugged Jane several times and exclaimed at how well and rosy she looked, how fine was her lavender traveling dress, how becoming her hair (which she now wore gathered back and twisted into an elegant knot, having at last abandoned her modest governess plaits for a style more suitable to a gentleman's wife), Diana turned to her cousin's husband.

"It is good to see you again, sir," she said warmly, grasping his proffered hand with real affection. "Welcome to Moor House."

"A pleasure to meet you again, Miss Rivers, thank you."

Diana laughed. "Miss Rivers! I am never called that but by the parson. You must tell him we don't stand on ceremony here, Jane. We are quite shamelessly informal."

A good-humored smile lit Edward's face. "I do not think I shall find it too hard to adapt, shall I Jane?"

"No, I daresay you shall not," she said, knowingly, and she smiled too, recalling his preference, in the early days of their acquaintance, for dispensing with the formalities that convention deemed necessary between employer and employee, and also the readiness with which she'd complied, with a secret thrill at this gesture of intimacy.

"Then," he said, speaking once more to their hostess, "I will take the liberty of addressing you henceforward by your Christian name, but only so long as it is reciprocated!" Diana had the immediate opportunity of gratifying his request as Mary appeared in the doorway.

"Ah, here is my sister Mary. Mary, come and meet Edward, Jane's husband."

Mary's greeting was equally warm, if not as verbose as her sister's, and Jane could see Edward's relief at her cousins' easy acceptance of him, despite his earlier dismissal in the coach of any need for reassurance on his part about the kindness and generosity they would be sure to show him. She was very much aware that the idea of St. John - and his proposal, never rejected outright by her, if never accepted - clouded every interaction Edward had with the sisters, and she understood he had to make certain for himself that they held no grudge against him for their brother's loss.

"Come – come into the parlor. After your long journey you must want some tea or a little hot negus, to be sure."

They were ushered inside, their cloaks and hats taken by a beaming Hannah, who welcomed 'Miss Jane' almost as eagerly as her cousins had, and curtsied politely to Edward, greeting him with a level "How d'ye do, sir."

It was strange beyond expression for Jane to be sitting in the familiar parlor, where she had sat so often studying German with Mary and Diana, or reading Hindustanee with St. John, or engaging in any number of various household tasks in the performance of which she could momentarily forget the persistent aching of her heart, which no amount of familial tenderness could quite allay.

Yet, apart from St. John's absence, the house seemed unchanged. While the refreshments were being got ready and Diana and Mary laid the parlor table with the tea service, Jane described the room to Edward. Looking around her at the furnishings, the view out of the windows, and even her cousins themselves who, like her, had not turned extravagant in the face of their newly acquired wealth and still dressed in modest good taste, she found there were no tangible signs of the year that had passed. And yet what a change that invisible year had brought her! The bliss, the comfort she had known in that time was reaffirmed and born anew in her with every heartbeat they shared, as the air that sustained them both passed in and out of them, spreading out into the ether only to be inhaled again, and co-mingled in their lungs. He was in every breath she took.

And the sight of him, sitting here by the windows where St. John had sat with such cold austerity, speaking so earnestly to her cousins, a half-smile hovering on his scarred face, filled her with an unspeakable sense of gratitude. For it was also here that St. John had so nearly claimed her, where she had so nearly - but for the manifestation of a phenomenon half-natural, half-witchery - lost forever the warm, animated, endlessly beloved man whose hand was now lifting the painted china teacup with such carefulness to his lips.

She had fled from this house to find him, never hoping, never even dreaming that she would return to it as his wife. And now here he was: the undreamed dream, the unhoped-for hope at the end of her journey.

If Diana and Mary had worried that their guests would be too wearied from their traveling to take much pleasure in the evening meal or partake with any kind of enthusiasm, a few minutes sufficed to prove their concerns unfounded.

Jane was luminous. Not a shadow of the three-day journey hung over her, not a trace of tiredness subdued her spirits. Conversation flowed easily from her lips, her face glowed with earnest delight as she spoke, and her happiness only increased with every word – every witty anecdote or expression of opinion from her husband that displayed his intelligent and insightful nature. Edward was in his most genial, convivial company humor, engaging Diana and even the soft-spoken Mary in all manner of discourse, eliciting from them both laughter and awe and, as the evening progressed, no small amount of respect. Set at ease by the balanced mental sharpness and sensitivity of the present company, he was in his element. Jane compared his manners with her cousins to his behavior at the house party she had witnessed two years back, and found that, if he was more charming now, his conversation more compelling and more brilliant, it was because the charm was unforced, the dialogue uncolored by the blandishments which were not only encouraged but expected among people of so-called fine society. And if the board here was smaller and the fare more humble, if the company was less glamorous, it was also less supercilious, less shallow and more enlightened.

St. John's name came up only twice in the course of the meal, to Jane's silent relief. Once she inquired – as she was bound to do out of familial concern – whether anything had been heard from him lately, whether he had settled well in Calcutta, and if so, how he was bearing up against the climate. But her cousins had had no news, and after uttering a few words of hope for his wellbeing, the subject was quickly abandoned, having drawn the brightness from their eyes, and cast Edward into palpable silence.

The second time St. John was mentioned it was only in reference to a friend of his, who had paid the sisters a visit two weeks previously. Mr. Wharton, in addition to having attended Cambridge with St. John, was a fellow clergyman and had received his training at the same college. Though devout, Mr. Wharton did not share his friend's zeal for the evangelical mission, and was content to practice his profession within the bounds of England. He had traveled to Morton as a favor to his absent friend, but - according to Diana - had such pleasing manners and was in general so agreeable that the three soon felt like old acquaintances. It had been decided upon that Mary and Diana should go to visit him later in the summer, and they were full of excitement at the prospect both of seeing the place where their brother had lived and been educated, and of seeing his friend again.

"Mr. Wharton spoke so warmly of Cambridge - its tranquility and greenness and grace - it shall be a delight to compare the reality with the vision his words conjured in our minds." In all their talk of Mr. Wharton, Mary had been unusually forthcoming, or so it seemed to Jane, but she resolved to keep her suspicions to herself, at least until she might have the opportunity of slipping Diana a sly inquiry.

"Do you know Cambridge at all, sir?" Diana was asking, addressing Edward.

"No, not well. I have only passed through it on a few occasions."

"Edward was an Oxford man," Jane explained.

"Ah, a rival!" Diana spoke teasingly, but Jane did not miss the implication in her husband's tone when he echoed,

"Yes. A rival."

"Well," she interrupted cheerily, "if you are to travel so far south I shall insist that you both stay a few days with us. Should they not, Darling?" And the conversation turned to Ferndean and Edward was safe.

Jane was so carefully attuned to him she could discern the minutest change in mood without looking at him, almost without hearing his voice. She had learned to sense and soon to divert these fluctuations of humor very early on in their marriage, when he had suffered recurring plagues of regret at his perceived inadequacy as a husband, his inability to protect and care for her whom he loved best. Through patience and reassurance and the daily proof of her adamantine, unalloyed love, these doubts had passed, but still Jane kept a watchful eye in order that she might nip any vestige of depression in the bud. All through dinner she was exceedingly attentive to him, but her attention was of such a soft and subtle nature that it was scarcely apparent. If her cousins had known her less, and were of the gossiping sort, they might have remarked that she played her husband with all the deftness of a master violinist – speaking to him a low word or pressing his hand gently if he lapsed into a few moments' silence – drawing from him a smile, a murmured reply, before returning to the present topic of conversation.

And, though their words were far from malicious, her cousins could not altogether avoid some comment on the meal's proceedings, and Jane, chancing to overhear a few fragments of their talk as she headed for the kitchen with the intention of helping with the clearing up, stopped outside in the shadows and listened.

"Were it him she were running from when she turned up here?"

"Yes Hannah, I believe it was. But you mustn't speak of that. It can only cause pain to them both."

"Indeed, Miss!" Hannah replied, indignant. "I'm sure I wouldn't ha' dreamed of doing such a thing."

"Whatever their past troubles, she is clearly devoted to him," Mary put in, gently.

"And he to her," Diana added. "I never saw a man behave with such tenderness as he does to our Jane. Why, he makes poor St. John seem quite rude in his manners."

"We oughtn't to compare him so often with St. John," Mary said, with a sigh that did not admonish, but seemed to.

"No, you are right - we oughtn't."

"It would be enough that he has made Jane so happy - I should like him for that, if for no other reason."

"Yes, she is a new creature. She was a dear thing before, and now - look how she has bloomed!"

"But indeed, I do truly like her husband for himself."

"So do I."

"Well, he is a gentleman," Hannah said stoutly, as if that settled the matter – which it did.

Jane blushed like a rose in the dark and crept back to where Edward sat at the table, joining him just before her cousins re-entered with a decanter of Madeira and glasses, all smiles, their eyes shining at her in the candlelight.

She felt she could have stayed up half the night talking, but even so – when the wine had been drunk and all that was left in the glasses were the ruby dregs, and the last mellow warmth from the fire had dissipated, and Diana and Mary rose, proclaiming the evening over, and Jane and Edward rose after them – she felt the pull of sleep in her limbs and noted the exaggerated relaxation in Edward's posture and felt she could imagine nothing better than to curl up beside him in the soft white sheets and sleep until slaked slumber woke her.

The house was sunk in distilled darkness, but the candles at the table still burned bright. Diana and Mary took one candle between them and left Jane the other. She took up the light one hand, and her husband's arm in the other, and they followed their hostesses upstairs.